LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 206, 5 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN OLD MAN’S DARLING. IN TWO CHAPTERS. Chapter I. ETHEL’S FIRST CONQUEST. The churchyard at Hawkshaw, in Kent, is one of the prettiest in England. Thirty years ago the then vicar made a regular garden of it, taking advantage of certain abrupt inequalities of ground; planting shrubs of cheerful character, to the exclusion of yews and weeping willows, causing the gravel paths to wind about, instead of intersecting the lawns at right angles, and encouraging the practice of converting graves into flower beds. To be buried there does not seem like being buried so much as being planted out, and the grave is robbed of much of that entrinsic terror for which we English seem to entertain a gloomy predilection. I speak of the beauty of this churchyard in the present tense, because it is tended with as much care now as when the late vicar was the proprietor, not a tenant of it; but it was only recently laid out, and the roots of the young trees had hardly got fairly hold of the soil on the fine October afternoon when Dr Antrobus entered it for the first time. Dr. Antrobus was very learned, very ingenious, very clear-headed, and very young ; as young as a man could well be to have taken the degree of doctor of medicine. His student friends called him Faust, averring solemnly that he was well on in his second century, but had drunk a rejuvenating potion, some witch’s put-me-back ; and it was certainly difficult for the ordinary learner to imagine how he could have acquired so much knowledge in so few years. The secret of his success was, that he loved science for its own sake, without any thought of self-interest or fame. Possessed of a small property, which rendered him independent of his profession, private practice was not the all-important matter to him which it is to most medical men, and he was quite content to settle down in a quiet country town, with a small, poor, and healthy population, where he had plenty of leisure to devote to the ologies. Had he, however, been ever so desirous of professional success, it is doubtful whether Antrobus could have attained it. He was thought very highly of at hospitals ; more than one learned society courted him ; highclass medical and philosophical journals considered his manuscripts as valuable as banknotes. But he was modest, diffident, hesitating ; and he was not a ladies’ man. It was on the third day of his arrival that he entered the pretty churchyard, hammer in hand; for when he found himself in a new part of the earth, he was like a schoolboy alone with a pie, he could not keep his fingers off the crust; and in cutting a path way on the side of a hill, the workmen had exposed a rock of interesting character, there being room for argument as to how it got there. Dr Antrobus was of middle height, diminished by a slight stoop, the result of studious habits, which had likewise compelled him to wear spectacles ; he had a benevolent expression of countenance, and a broad massive forehead. His dress was always the same, summer and winter, grubbing in the fields, dredging at sea, or at a patient’s bedside; and consisted of shepherd’s plaid trousers, black tail-coat and waistcoat, spotted silk hankerchief, twisted several times round his neck, and tied in a little'bow, which- was sometimes under one ear, sometimes under the other, never straight; high shirt collars, intended to stick up, but not succeeding very well; and a chimney-pot hat in need of brushing, and worn too far back on his head. But he was as clean, though not so sleek, as a cat. He was in geological luck that afternoon, for Mattock the sexton was digging a grave, and so revealing secrets of subsoil. Mattock misinterpreted the interest taken by the stranger in his operations. * It will be a dry un, sir,’ said he, pausing in hie work, and looking up to the top of the pit in which he stood.

‘So I perceive chalk,’ replied the doctor. “You knowed her, may be, sir?’ continued the sexton, leaning on his_ spade in a chat inviting manner. Experience had taught him that promiscuous conversation often led to beer. ‘ I can’t say till I hear her name; most probably not. ’ ‘ Cane, her name was—Miss Cane, as is to be buried to-morrow.’ ‘No ; I never heard of her.’ ‘ Ah, then you haven’t been to Hawkshaw before; that’s certain. No offence ; I thought you might have been a relative. 0 lor, what a wunner she were !’ Doubtful whether this was praise or blame, Dr Antrobus uttered a neutral ‘Ah!’ ‘ She were,’ continued Mattock, ‘ reg’lar lightning and vinegar; a reg’lar lady too, such a tongue! The children used to cut and run when they saw her, and she could never keep but one servant, who was stone deaf. But she meant no harm, bless you ; she had a kind heart. ’ This last sentence was a tribute to death, not the result of experience. Mattock remembered the proverb, do mortuis, &c, just then, and felt that it applied with extra force when the departed was a customer. He would gladly have mentioned her virtues, but they did not chance to occur to him ; so he shook his head, and went on digging. ‘Papa!’ cried a silvery voice behind Dr Antrobus, wbo turned round, and saw a fairy, who, finding a stranger instead of her father, opened her small mouth and large eyes very wide, and took stock of him. Approving, she remained where she was, and smiled. ‘ Well, my dear,’ said the doctor, * you see I am not papa. Have you lost him ? Shall we look for him ?’ * No. Who are you ?’ ‘ I am Gregory Powder. ’ ‘ Where are the flowers ?’ ‘The flowers; well, I do not see any. There are no autumn flowers planted, and the summer flowers are all dead. ’ ‘ What a pity. ’ ‘ Never mind, dear; they will all come again in the spring. ’ ( All come in the spring ? Sure ?’ ‘Yes; theirx-oots are in the ground, and alive. ’ ‘ Why is Mattock digging the hole ?’ asked the child, peeping in. ‘ They are going to bury Miss Cane.’ ‘Oh ! Do you know I did not like Miss Cane—much.’ Then, after a pause: ‘I hope Miss Cane won’t come up again in the spring!’ ‘ Oh, you nice child!’ cried the doctor, catching her up, ‘ I have a good mind to kiss you.’ ‘You may kiss me’if you won’t sc’ub,’ said the little maid composedly. ‘Papa sc’ubs d’eadful sometimes. Oh, there he is!’ The doctor turned in the direction indicated, and saw a stout man with a green net, who immediately called out: • What, Antrobus ! lam glad to have lit upon you in this lucky way. I called on you an hour ago, but you were out. I was pleased to see your card, yesterday, I can tell you. Is it true that you are coming to settle here?’ The speakerwas none other than the famous Scaraby, whose researches in natural history had earned for him the title of the English Buffon, though of late years he had confined his personal investigations very much to moths and beetles. His worship of science, however, was catholic, and he was the president of a philosophical society, which reckoned Dr Antrobus amongst its most promising members. ‘ I have fallen in love with your little girl,’ said the doctor. ‘By-the-bye, Scaraby, I did not know that you were a family man.’

‘ I have lost all but Ethel,’ replied Mr Scaraby, * and their mother has gone from me too. I should be a lonely man without my baby, else I had sailed before now to Fevraguana in search of the Singeum furdevovans, of which I have no satisfactory specimen. It would be hardly prudent to take her, I suppose ?’ ‘ Hardly; especially as, if you lost her while moth hunting, you would not find her again in a tropical forest so easily as in a Kentish churchyard. ’ * True ; and she is a regular little truant. Are you not, Ethel ?’ ‘ Sometimes, when papa’s vewy long cashing butterfies. ’ The acquaintance which already existed between Scaraby and Antrobus soon ripened into a close friendship. Their tastes, theninterests were the same ; their dispositions were similar, and the twenty years’ difference between their ages was never thought of by either. And Ethel played about the pair of philosophers like a kitten. It was absurd to see how fond Antrobus grew of her. She called him by the first name he had given himself, Gregory Powder, for six months, when he was promoted to Uncle Gregory, and there he remained, though his real name was William. She was indeed a very nice child; never troublesome, always able to amuse herself, and very original. When the doctor had been settled three years in Hawkshaw, she put the final touch to her conquest. He went to the bank one day upon some business which necessitated an interview with one of the partners in his private room ; and as he was coming out again into the office, he heard his little friend’s voice, saying, “ Please, will you give me sixpence for that?” and drawing back and peeping, he saw her face over the counter, which her chin just surmounted. The grayheaded clerk whom she addressed took the paper she presented, and said, in a voice trembling with suppressed laughter : “How will you have it, Miss Scaraby—in silver or copper ?’ ‘Copper,’ she said decisively, and walked off with a handful of halfpence. When she was clear of the premises, the doctor came forward and received this document, written in text-hand on a leaf torn out of a copy-book, from the convulsed clerk: ■please pay ethel or a hare sichspense. Gd, etkel. It seems a pity that Ethel should ever have grown out of her quaint childhood, but she did it so imperceptibly, that the transition was not observed by either her father or the doctor. Other changes took place ; Antrobus ceased to live alone. He owned two maiden aunts who had hid themselves away in an odd corner of Devonshire, _ and subsisted pretty comfortably on annuities. When one died, however, the other found herself in somewhat straitened circumstances, so this dutiful nephew had her to keep house for him, and Ethel called her ‘ Granny. ’ She was a good soul, but rather odd and prudish, and aid not much approve of

the title at first. Indeed, she once remonstrated with the child; but the effect of this was that the next time Ethel called her Granny in public, she turned round and explained that Miss Antrobus could not be her grandmother really, because she had never been married, and she only called her so out of affection. So, after that, the prudent spinster accepted her brevet in silence, and by the time the girl came to live with her, would have felt hurt had she called her anything else. Came to live with her ? Yes. When Ethel was fourteen, her father caught a pleurisy in the Essex marshes, when he was beetlehunting, and died. He left his collections to his university, his property to his child, and appointed his friend and executor, Dr Antrobus, her guardian. This was Ethel’s first acquaintance with death, for she was a mere infant when she lost her mother, and the mystery, the helpless grief, the hopeless horror of it, shattered her childhood. The wave of sorrow passed over her in time, but never again did she recover the careless, thoughtless, birdlike happiness of her former life. She knew now the evil as well as the good ? her eyes were opened to the cruel reality, that every path in this world leads to one dreary waste. For the rest, the burden of the child’s sorrow was lightened so far as was possible; she was spared the sudden plunge from comfort to poverty, from affectionate sympathy to cold selfishness, from petting to tyranny, which so often awaits the orphan girl. The intimacy between the families had been so close that there was little change in leaving one home for the other, and with both her guardian and his aunt, her wish was law. Indeed, Ethel Scaraby ought to have grown up into an insufferable young woman, instead of, as was the case, an exceedingly natural, self-forgetting, charming one; but there are some natures that you cannot spoil, at least by kindness. A little more than a year after Mr Scaraby’s death, Dr Antrobus was induced to join an expedition having for its object an investigation of the flora, fauna, and geological phenomena of the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, extending from Algeria to Abyssinia, and comprising Tripoli, Egypt, and Nubia. So he set his house in order. Ethel was to continue living with his aunt till the uncertain date of his return, the difficulty about her education being comfortably solved by the fact of there being a very good girls’ school in the neighbourhood, to which competent masters came periodically from London. He considered his ward to be far too precious a trust indeed to be risked in a chance company of a school while her mind and heart were forming ; so he made arrangements with the various proj fessors—warranted middle-aged and married, every man of them—to give her lessons separately. It was rather expensive, but that did not matter ; for, living in Granny’s simple way, it was impossible to spend her income on her. Gibraltar was the place appointed as the rendezvous of the philosophers. When Dr Antrobus arrived there, he found that certain arrangements connected with the expedition would not be complete so soon as had been anticipated, and he had a fortnight’s spare time on his hands, which he at once determined to devote to a trip that had often tempted him—a visit to Sicily and Etna; so he took passage on board a vessel bound for Messina. Take ten fine English sunsets, add an aurora borealis, mix in a dozen rainbows, well beaten up, and you may perhaps have the right colours on your palette, to depict the scene which Dr Antrobus was enjoying as he sat in a small boat manned by two picturesque sailors, who cultivated long black moustaches, and smoked cigarettes instead of chewing quids. The sea was a broad sheet of exquisitely stained glass, without a wave or a flaw, and having a single jewel, shaped like a twomasted felucca, set in it. The mountains, swelling gracefully upwards till they culminated in Etna, looked too soft and ethereal to be true. Enchanted boundaries of paradise they seemed, which would recede if mortal man approached them. But the doctor, who had walked all over them, routing in tufa and scoriae, knew better; he was also aware that all these fairy tints would become black with a rapidity unknown to more northern latitudes, directly the sun was turned down, and that, therefore, as he was more than a mile from the shore, it would be as well to go about. Just as he was about to give directions to that effect, however, he thought he saw a handkerchief waved, as if signalling him, on board the felucca, which was not above five hundred yards off. So he told his men to row up to her, and found, on approaceing, that his surmise was correct: a lady, leaning over the bulwark, was beckoning to him. To bo continued.